is it you take so deeply to heart?' 'If you would do me
any good I would willingly tell you,' said the merchant. 'Who knows but
I may?' said the little man: 'tell me what ails you, and perhaps you
will find I may be of some use.' Then the merchant told him how all his
wealth was gone to the bottom of the sea, and how he had nothing left
but that little plot of land. 'Oh, trouble not yourself about that,'
said the dwarf; 'only undertake to bring me here, twelve years hence,
whatever meets you first on your going home, and I will give you as much
as you please.' The merchant thought this was no great thing to ask;
that it would most likely be his dog or his cat, or something of that
sort, but forgot his little boy Heinel; so he agreed to the bargain, and
signed and sealed the bond to do what was asked of him.

But as he drew near home, his little boy was so glad to see him that he
crept behind him, and laid fast hold of his legs, and looked up in
his face and laughed. Then the father started, trembling with fear and
horror, and saw what it was that he had bound himself to do; but as no
gold was come, he made himself easy by thinking that it was only a joke
that the dwarf was playing him, and that, at any rate, when the money
came, he should see the bearer, and would not take it in.

About a month afterwards he went upstairs into a lumber-room to look
for some old iron, that he might sell it and raise a little money; and
there, instead of his iron, he saw a large pile of gold lying on the
floor. At the sight of this he was overjoyed, and forgetting all about
his son, went into trade again, and became a richer merchant than
before.

Meantime little Heinel grew up, and as the end of the twelve years drew
near the merchant began to call to mind his bond, and became very sad
and thoughtful; so that care and sorrow were written upon his face. The
boy one day asked what was the matter, but his father would not tell for
some time; at last, however, he said that he had, without knowing it,
sold him for gold to a little, ugly-looking, black dwarf, and that the
twelve years were coming round when he must keep his word. Then Heinel
said, 'Father, give yourself very little trouble about that; I shall be
too much for the little man.'

When the time came, the father and son went out together to the place
agreed upon: and the son drew a circle on the ground, and set himself
and his father in the middle of it. The little black dwarf s